Browning wrote concerning this poem: "There is no sort of historical foundation about _Good News from Ghent_. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse 'York' then in my stable at home. It was written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's _Simboli_, I remember." Such an incident might, of course, have happened at the "Pacification of Ghent," a treaty of union between Holland, Zealand, and southern Netherlands under William of Orange, against Philip II of Spain. The distance between Ghent and Aix as mapped out in this poem is something more than ninety miles. Do you think a horse could gallop that distance? Notice that the verse gives the effect of galloping. [234] 10. =Pique=; seems to be the pommel. [235] 14 ff. =Lokeren=, =Boom=, =Düffeld=, =Mecheln=, =Aerschot=, =Hasselt=, =Looz=, =Tongres=, =Dalhem=; towns varying from seven to twenty-five miles apart on the route taken from Ghent to Aix. [236] See Note 235 above. [237] See Note 235 above. [238] See Note 235 above. [239] See Note 235 above. [240] See Note 235 above. [241] See Note 235 above. [242] See Note 235 above. [243] See Note 235 above. [244] 46. =Save Aix.= Notice that this is the first we know of the purpose of this ride. Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP (Page 156) Ratisbon (German Regensburg), which has been besieged seventeen times since the eighteenth century, was stormed by Napoleon, May, 1809, during his Austrian campaign. Mrs. Sutherland Orr, the biographer of Browning, says this incident actually happened, except that the hero was a man and not a boy. [245] 5. =Neck out-thrust.= Notice how Browning gives the well-known attitude of Napoleon. [246] 9. =Mused.= What effect has this supposed soliloquy of Napoleon? [247] 11. =Lannes=; a general of Napoleon's, and the Duke of Montebello. [248] 29. =Flag-bird.= What bird was on Napoleon's flag? THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN (Page 158) There are many versions of this story which Browning might have used. He is said to have used directly the account in _The Wonders of the Little World; or a General History of Man_, written by Nathaniel Wanley and published in 1678. This poem, however, from whatever source the story was taken, was deservedly popular long before Browning himself was. It was written to amuse, during a sickness, the son of William Macready, the most prominent English actor of his time and a close friend of Browning's. [249] 1. =Hamelin=; a town near Hanover, the capital of the province of Brunswick, Prussia. [250] 37. =Guilder=; a Dutch coin worth about forty cents. [251] 68. =Trump of Doom.= The Archangel Gabriel was to blow his trumpet to summon the dead on the Day of Judgment. [252] 79. =Pied Piper.= _Pied_ means variegated like a magpie. Cf. _piebald_.